I am a Mac user that uses a number of VMs in Parallels (yeah I know VM Fusion is better, or so they say). This functionality is critical for my job doing QA, testing and support of the custom software that my company uses. I have to be able to test shit on the fly, and not just which browser. For example, I have currently on my LAPTOP mind you:

OSXXP SP2XP SP3VistaWin 7 32Win 7 64Ubuntu

All readily available to pull up without shutting down my host OS. If this didn't win the argument for me in my current job, 3 words for you regarding work-owned Macbooks (for musicians):

Are you insane or simply incapable of using this thing the rest of use refer to as "logic"? You can't claim something doesn't exist and is more expensive, you just come across like a frothing WinTel fanboi.

Wait, why can't Macs play Blu Ray? (Not that I would actually care about that missing feature before games start coming out on them.)

USB was a redefinition of how peripherals could and should be connected to your computer. It is highly fallacious to imply that Thunderbolt is to the rest of the field as USB was to all those monstrous pin connectors of yore. The only thing Thunderbolt is good for right now would be outputting to a 2560x1440/1600 screen and Display Port CRUSHES] Thunderbolt at that. Being an Apple exclusive is good for nobody but Apple. It stifles innovation of hardware that uses the standard because, quite frankly, it lacks market share and is guaranteed to lack that market share for at least a year.

The only logical flaw is in your head. Point b) is a perfectly fair supposition based on Apple's pricing. Also, no one has called you a Macfag, so how about you turn down the fanboy bullshit.

Panzerdin wrote:(in which case an equally good solution would be to use Linux)

If I would have to choose between Linux and OSX, OSX would win every time. Take any imagined or real level of driver issues you may experience in Windows and add in having to write the drivers yourself. I had more than enough driver writing from my assembly language classes for this lifetime.

gibborim wrote:If I would have to choose between Linux and OSX, OSX would win every time. Take any imagined or real level of driver issues you may experience in Windows and add in having to write the drivers yourself. I had more than enough driver writing from my assembly language classes for this lifetime.

gibborim wrote:Wait, why can't Macs play Blu Ray? (Not that I would actually care about that missing feature before games start coming out on them.)

Apple (probably Our Lord Steve Himself) have made the call that BlueRay is dead tech and have refused to support it (same with USB 3).

They're making the "floppy" call again - they were the first manufacturer to drop serial/parallel ports for "USB only" and they stopped shipping floppy drives in like... 1990-something. Too tired to cite. Was considered ridiculous at the time. Meanwhile my brand-new work Dell still has a floppy drive, PS2, serial and parallel ports. And uses the freaking BIOS to boot.... OMG WTF FOR!

They're basically making the same call with optical disks. Their expectation is that by the time you might actually need BlueRay you'll just be delivering all you software over wireless. The iPad already does, and they're moving that way with the Mac as well (App Store for Mac).

As far as I can tell all BlueRay is good for is trying to convince me to re-buy all my DvDs (not going to happen) or to charge me more for the same movie (very rarely is DvD too "low res" FFS). Especially in the US, Apple's plan seems to be "Why would you go buy the BlueRay? Just grab it straight of iTunes without leaving the couch!

And if you think that Apple have no chance winning a war vs the movie houses, just remember who Disney's largest shareholder is... OLSH.

Last edited by knaughty on Tue Apr 05, 2011 12:02 am, edited 2 times in total.

gibborim wrote:USB was a redefinition of how peripherals could and should be connected to your computer. It is highly fallacious to imply that Thunderbolt is to the rest of the field as USB was to all those monstrous pin connectors of yore.(1) The only thing Thunderbolt is good for right now would be outputting to a 2560x1440/1600 screen and Display Port CRUSHES](2) Thunderbolt at that. Being an Apple exclusive is good for nobody but Apple.(3) It stifles innovation of hardware that uses the standard because, quite frankly, it lacks market share and is guaranteed to lack that market share for at least a year.(4)

(1) ThunderBolt replaces (off the top of my head, and specifically for the consumer market): USB3, FireWire, DVI, DisplayPort, E-SATA, FibreChannel. Oh, and it requires no OS-level drivers, since it is (and presents as) PCI-E.

(2) Errr.... ThunderBolt includes, and is backwards compatible with, Display port. This is about as logical as claiming that USB1 crushes USB2 at driving the mouse!

(3) It's an Openish Intel standard, anyone using Intel chipsets gets it. The problem is that no other PC has the hardware and the OS from the same vendor, so Intel is expecting WinDell to take a year to get the arse in gear.

(4)You're aware that Apple is the number 1 laptop manufacturer and the number 2 desktop manufacturer? Toyota's market share and Apple's market share are quite similar, and in their respective markets they're number 1. Would you claim that a massive innovation that Toyota was rolling out is "Meaningless, because Toyota only have 10% of the market share!"

Typical nerd response to the iPod: Slashdot: Lame WTF is a "Nomad" anyway?

(1) ThunderBolt replaces (off the top of my head, and specifically for the consumer market): USB3, FireWire, DVI, DisplayPort, E-SATA, FibreChannel. Oh, and it requires no OS-level drivers, since it is (and presents as) PCI-E.

Always with the drivers.

(2) Errr.... ThunderBolt includes, and is backwards compatible with, Display port. This is about as logical as claiming that USB1 crushes USB2 at driving the mouse!

Hrm, I should have searched the Thunderbolt documentation more thoroughly, the first thing I saw was 10gbit/sec out vs DPs 17gb/sec.

(3) It's an Openish Intel standard, anyone using Intel chipsets gets it. The problem is that no other PC has the hardware and the OS from the same vendor, so Intel is expecting WinDell to take a year to get the arse in gear.

Your response sounded silly and wrong, so I checked a bit. It looks like Apple actually had a hand in the developement of Thunderbolt and that is why they are getting an exclusive.

(4)You're aware that Apple is the number 1 laptop manufacturer and the number 2 desktop manufacturer? Toyota's market share and Apple's market share are quite similar, and in their respective markets they're number 1. Would you claim that a massive innovation that Toyota was rolling out is "Meaningless, because Toyota only have 10% of the market share!"

You are either making a very specious connection between largest single producer and OS market share, or you are being deliberately obtuse so you can have a fourth point. Aside from Apple's bottom line, it is meaningless that they are outselling any one of the fifteen Windows laptop makers. The amount of hardware in play with Thunderbolt support is extremely small and because it is exclusive with Apple for now, it will not gain the kind of traction it needs to get hardware companies really pushing development of components that support the standard. Unless the new standard is earth shatteringly amazing, which I assure you that a healthy dollop of more-faster is not, its rate of adoption is being hurt severely by exclusivity with a single manufacturer.

Ah, good old comparing Apples and Oranges. Oddly enough, doubling a data-rate is not analogous to Toyota doubling their gas mileage.

Panzerdin wrote:Oh, and Thunderbolt is useless because it isn't any faster than USB 3 for practical purposes: only the very highest of high-end SSDs can actually read/write fast enough for anyone to notice a difference.

Typical WinTel bigot argument.

Macs suck because they don't have BlueRay / USB3, which are awesome! Firewire and USB2 simply don't cut it!

<Apple launches ThunderBolt, which kicks the shit out of USB3>

USB3 is clearly good enough! No one needs anything faster!

Any Windows technology that Macs are missing is always critically important. Any PC technology that Apple launch first (hello, USB?) is always beyond the bleeding edge and useless.

Obviously SSDs are going to remain slow and expensive forever. I mean, it isn't like Moore's law applies to flash chips.

Oh... wait... never mind.

In all honesty, Thunderbolt is a feature I agree with including on a mac. Similarly, I'm fully behind Apple in disregarding Blue-Ray drives (I myself don't have a CD-drive of any kind). My issue is simply that there doesn't seem to be much to choose between USB3 and Thunderbolt (they both offer very similar speeds, if memory serves), so it makes more sense to back the technology that's backwards compatible with something that's already very widespread.

Are you insane or simply incapable of using this thing the rest of use refer to as "logic"? You can't claim something doesn't exist and is more expensive, you just come across like a frothing WinTel fanboi.

I can however use the conditional tense. It doesn't exist, but if it did then it WOULD cost at least a grand more, based on the prices of similar macs.

And I'm not sure where the idea that Linux requires that one write one's own drivers came from.

Thunderbolt is display port plus pci-e, on a daisy-chain cable. What's not to love? As for "Apple only makes it useless" please recall that it was Apple's decision to go USB only that created a market large enough for USB peripherals to take off.

Apple users are almost by definition the high end of the market, they spend a ton of money on softest and peripherals. Thunderbolt is far more likely to be a success with Apple being first company mass-shipping than any other.

Macs actually had a working shareware market.... The mindset is different.

Shows up best in the smartphone software sales figures. Apple and Android now have roughly the same number of handsets in the field. A couple of companies who ship software across both platforms have released their sales figures. Sales on iOS are ten times the volume for a lot less testing effort.

Android isn't even open anymore, once Google decided it should be closed.

knaughty wrote:Yeah, those graphics cards, we should talk about those.

Yea, it sounds like his work is providing machines to work on. He also seems to have some level of need for gaming hardware. He just finished school, so he is probably somewhere in the spectrum of poor.

Building a PC seems like a good choice. You can always make it into a Hackintosh if you decide OSX is the best thing ever at work.

I agree with Gibborim's advice too. If he is getting supplied a mac from work, there is no reason to get another mac for your house needs. Especially for a newly postgraduate student, who most likely cannot afford the premium.

Anyway, it has been mentioned a few times in this thread that making a Mac partition on a PC would be illegal. Why is that? Is it just impossible to buy an OSX license w/o also buying a Mac attached to the license?

Anyway, it has been mentioned a few times in this thread that making a Mac partition on a PC would be illegal. Why is that? Is it just impossible to buy an OSX license w/o also buying a Mac attached to the license?

OSX won't let you install unless it detects you are using an apple motherboard, basically. There are methods of getting around it, but it's a process more akin to rooting a phone than just installing an operating system.

I'm not sure how legal it is, but there are many sites dedicated to getting it working; but it is a lot more work than just "put in disk, install OS".